Honey Monster Reports – Saturday 2 January

Every Saturday I look at something fun you can do with your mum and dad or brother or sister or Aunty Marge and Uncle Tom or Nanny or Grandad or someone else, to get out of the house and do something fun. Monsters don’t like staying indoors, we’re too big anyway it’s a lot nicer to be able to stretch out and run around, don’t you think?

Today’s Monster Day Out is……. The Tower of London

Parts of The Tower of London, were built nearly thousand years ago – that’s MONSTROUSLY old!

Over the centuries it has been a fortress, a royal palace, and a prison (especially for royal prisoners). It has also been a place of execution and torture, an armoury, a treasury, a zoo, the Royal Mint where coins were made, a public records office, an observatory, and since 1303, the home of the Crown Jewels of the United Kingdom. You can visit and see the jewels or if you like more gruesome things look at the dungeons.

The tower is popular with ravens – they’re big black birds. Legend has it that when the ravens leave the tower it will fall. The legend is so important that ten ravens are specially kept by a Yeoman Warder, or Beefeater, who takes care of them so they want to stay. The names of the current Ravens are Gwylum, Thor, Hugin, Munin, Branwen, Bran, Gundulf, Baldrick, Fleur and Colin.

Do you think they ran out of fancy names when they got to poor old Colin? Hee hee!